The couch from sitcom Roseanne is the star of the show as an oversized, inflatable replica of the sofa that appeared in the Conners’ family room turns up at GalaxyCon. GalaxyCon brings together fans of comic books, sci-fi, fantasy, anime, wrestling and other aspects of pop culture. Those events happen in Richmond, Virginia, from March 15-17; Raleigh, North Carolina, July 25-28; San Jose, California, August 16-18; and in Miami, with the date to be announced. 

Cozi TV and Carsey-Werner Television are behind the couch stunt. 

Cozi TV will air “Roseanne Couch Week” July 8-12. The event begins nightly at 11 p.m. ET and is hosted by an animated, crocheted couch. Four Roseanne episodes show per night, and the couch “will spill the stuffing on behind-the-scenes stories and favorite moments from the show,” Cozi teased. 

NBCUniversal Local owns Cozi, which said Roseanne is transitioning from standard to HD episodes. 

Roseanne, starring Roseanne Barr, was on ABC from 1988 to 1997. It returned briefly in 2018, but was canceled after off-color comments were made by Barr. Roseanne was remade into The Conners, which does not have Barr in the cast. 

Season six began on ABC this month. John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert and Lecy Goranson are in the cast. 

Cozi airs Roseanne weeknights at 10 p.m. to midnight ET. 

The Conners, a spinoff of ABC’s hit ‘90s sitcom Roseanne, has been sold to TV stations covering more than 85% of the country, Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury said. The show, which is produced by Werner Entertainment and entering its sixth season on ABC, will premiere on CBS, Gray Television, Lockwood Broadcast Group, Nexstar Media Group, Scripps and Weigel Broadcasting-owned stations this fall.  

“With Tom Werner providing the highest-rated sitcom to enter off-network syndication in recent memory, The Conners will serve as the cornerstone of many of our great station partners’ late afternoon and early evening schedules for many years to come,” Debmar-Mercury co-presidents Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein said in a statement. “This will provide them with a strong competitive advantage in their most valuable dayparts.” 

Last August, Lionsgate’s Worldwide Television Distribution Group and distribution company Debmar-Mercury partnered with Tom Werner’s Werner Entertainment on a global licensing deal for the show. Under the terms of the agreement, the Worldwide Television Distribution Group handles global distribution, including subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), ad-supported VOD, basic cable and free ad-supported television (FAST) rights, while Debmar-Mercury shepherds domestic syndication. The deal covers all existing seasons of the series, as well as rights to future seasons following ABC’s first window.

The Conners — starring Sara Gilbert, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Lecy Goranson — is produced by Werner Entertainment. Tom Werner, in association with Gilbert, serves as executive producer along with Bruce Helford, Dave Caplan, Bruce Rasmussen and Tony Hernandez.

The deal was negotiated by Bernstein, Marcus and Lionsgate President of Worldwide Television Distribution Jim Packer for the studio, and UTA and Jackoway Austen on behalf of Werner Entertainment.   

The Conners will be distributed globally, across platforms and in syndication by Lionsgate and its syndication-focused subsidiary Debmar-Mercury in partnership with series producer Werner Entertainment, the companies said Wednesday.

Lionsgate Worldwide Television Distribution Group will handle global distribution of the ABC sitcom, as well as to subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), advertising-supported VOD, basic cable and free ad-supported television (FAST) platforms. Debmar-Mercury will distribute the series in domestic syndication. The deal covers all five seasons of the series as well as rights to future seasons with ABC maintaining its first-window rights.

The Conners is expected to debut in domestic syndication in fall 2024. While Debmar-Mercury and Lionsgate are distributing this show, production entity Carsey-Werner — launched by Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner — still distributes many of the shows it has produced over the years.

The Conners stars Sara Gilbert, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Lecy Goranson and is a spinoff of ABC’s hit sitcom Roseanne, which was produced and is still distributed by Carsey-Werner, aired from 1988 to 1997, and made Roseanne Barr a household name. The show began as a revival of Roseanne in 2018 but was canceled after Barr sent out a volley of tweets considered to be racist. Barr was then fired, with her character written out and the show retitled. 

The Conners returns to ABC later this year — depending on when the writers’ and actors’ strikes are resolved — for season six. Nearly 5 million people watched the season-five series finale. 

“This agreement shows Lionsgate’s ability to marshal all of its resources, combining the strength and prowess of our global distribution with Debmar-Mercury’s unparalleled syndication expertise in support of a remarkable brand and series,” Lionsgate president of worldwide television distribution Jim Packer said in a statement.

“In the tradition of some of the most successful, longest-running multi-cam sitcoms, The Conners promises to be a great addition to TV stations lineups, and will offer a proven competitive advantage to broadcasters for years to come,” Debmar-Mercury co-presidents Ira Bernstein and Mort Marcus said, also in a statement.  

The deal was negotiated by Packer, Bernstein and Marcus for the studio, and UTA and Jackoway Austen on behalf of Werner Entertainment.   

ABC has renewed dramas Big Sky and A Million Little Things, and comedies The Conners, Home Economics and The Wonder Years. Big Sky gets season three, A Million Little Things will see season five, The Conners reaches season five, Home Economics goes for season three, and The Wonder Years gets a second season. 

20th Television produces Big Sky in association with A+E Studios. Kylie Bunbery and Katheryn Winnick star in the David E. Kelley show. Jensen Ackles joins the cast in season three and Jamie-Lynn Sigler has been upped to series regular. 

ABC Signature and Kapital Entertainment produce A Million Little Things. David Giuntoli, Romany Malco and Allison Miller are in the cast. 

The Conners comes from Werner Entertainment. John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert are in the cast. 

Home Economics comes from Lionsgate and ABC Signature. Topher Grace, Caitlin McGee and Jimmy Tatro are in the cast. 

The Wonder Years comes from 20th Television, a reboot of the late ‘80s sitcom. Elisha Williams, Dulé Hill and Saycon Sengbloh are in the cast, and Don Cheadle narrates.

Dramas Queens and Promised Land were canceled earlier in the week.

ABC presents its upfront show in New York May 17. ■

ABC has shared the first batch of its mid-season premiere dates, which includes The Bachelor on Jan. 3. Comedy Abbott Elementary airs Tuesday, Dec. 7, then moves to its regular time period Tuesday, Jan. 4. Quinta Brunson is behind the series, about a group of passionate teachers, and a tone-deaf principal, navigating the Philadelphia school system. 

Quiz show The Chase starts Jan. 5, along with the winter returns of comedies The Goldbergs, The Wonder Years, The Conners and Home Economics.  

Women of the Movement, about Mamie Till-Mobley seeking justice for son Emmett Till, premieres Thursday, Jan. 6. There are six episodes. 

Adrienne Warren plays Mamie and Cedric Joe plays Emmett. Marissa Jo Cerar created the series.  

Drama Promised Land, about two Latinx families vying for power in California’s Sonoma Valley, starts Monday, Jan. 24. John Ortiz, Cecilia Suarez and Augusto Aguilera are in the cast. 

Matt Lopez wrote the project and executive produces. 

ABC starts season four of The Conners on Sept. 22 with a bang, with live episodes for both the East and West Coast. John Goodman, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf and Lecy Goranson are in the cast. 

And you could be too. The show is holding a contest for fans, which will see lucky winners appear on the show — contacted on the phone by a cast member as the live episode rolls, and carrying on a convo as America watches. 

Executive producer Bruce Helford called the live episode “a love letter to the fans,” and a celebration as the nation slowly climbs out of pandemic purgatory. Each of the two live broadcasts plan to feature four surprise guests. “I have no idea what we’re going to talk to them about,” Helford said. “That’s the kind of live TV that I like the most.”

Interested parties can go to BeAConner.com for more information. 

Why does so much of America connect with the Conner clan? “There’s a certain trust the audience has with the actors,” Helford said. “They see their own families in the Conners.”

The Ghost and Molly McGee premieres on Disney Channel Oct. 1. The animated show depicts Molly, a tween optimist, and Scratch, a grouchy ghost. A Scratch curse backfires, and he finds himself bound forever to Molly. She’s psyched. He is not. 

Bill Motz and Bob Roth created the series, and executive produce. Motz saw his upbeat personality emerge as the Molly character came to life. A pessimist, Roth saw the same thing happen with Scratch. 

“Molly is an extrovert and Scratch is an introvert. She’s an optimist, he’s a pessimist,” Roth said. “She’s happy-go-lucky, he’s just happy to go anywhere else but here.”

Motz and Roth have been working together for over 30 years. Their work includes Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures and The Penguins of Madagascar. 

The Ghost and Molly McGee has been in the works for 14 years. “We never found the right moment, the right circumstance where it just clicked,” said Motz. 

That finally happened. “There’s a sense of optimism and hope, and it felt like the right time for a show that leans into this kind of positivity,” Motz said. 

Ashly Burch voices Molly and Dana Snyder handles Scratch. “As soon as [Burch] came into the room, it was, that is Molly,” Roth said. 

Motz called Snyder “hilariously funny” and a deft improvisationalist. The chemistry between the ghost and Molly had to work for the show to work. “Dana and Ashly felt like best friends,” said Motz. “They had this camaraderie and chemistry.” λ

The Conners goes live for its season four premiere Wednesday, Sept. 22 on ABC. 

The cast will perform live for both the East and West Coast broadcasts, and the show is launching "You Can Be A Conner," which offers viewers the chance to win a virtual appearance during the season premiere. As part of the storyline, a Conner family member will call each sweepstakes winner for a live conversation regarding how they deal with some of the same life issues that the Conners navigate. Interested parties can visit www.BeAConner.com for more information. 

John Goodman plays Dan Conner on the show. Laurie Metcalf is Jackie Harris, Sara Gilbert portrays Darlene Conner, Lecy Goranson is Becky Conner-Healy and Michael Fishman plays D.J. Conner. 

Also Read: Hitting the Heartland

The Conners is executive produced by Tom Werner, along with Sara Gilbert, Bruce Helford, Dave Caplan, Bruce Rasmussen and Tony Hernandez. Werner Entertainment produces the show.

ABC has renewed dramas A Million Little Things for season four and The Rookie for season four as well. ABC also renewed comedies Black-ish (season eight), The Conners (season four), The Goldbergs (season nine) and Home Economics (season two). 

On the unscripted side, America’s Funniest Home Videos gets season 32, American Idol sees season five on ABC, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune gets season two, Shark Tank heads toward season 13 and Supermarket Sweep gets season two.

A Million Little Things is created and executive produced by DJ Nash. Aaron Kaplan, Dana Honor and David Marshall Grant are executive producers. 

The Rookie has Alexi Hawley, Mark Gordon, Nathan Fillion, Michelle Chapman and Bill Norcross as executive producers. 

The season three finale airs May 16. 

It will be the eighth and final season for Black-ish. Kenya Barris created the show and executive produces with Courtney Lilly, Laura Gutin Peterson, Anthony Anderson, Laurence Fishburne, Helen Sugland, E. Brian Dobbins and Michael Petok. 

The season seven finale is on May 18. 

The Conners has Bruce Helford as executive producer and showrunner. Tom Werner, Sara Gilbert, Dave Caplan, Bruce Rasmussen and Tony Hernandez are also executive producers. 

Season three ends May 19. 

Eighties comedy The Goldbergs has Adam F. Goldberg, Doug Robinson, Alex Barnow, Chris Bishop, Annette Davis, Mike Sikowitz, David Guarascio and Wendi McLendon-Covey as its exec producers. 

The season finale is on May 19. 

Home Economics, about three adult siblings and their uncomfortable yet heartwarming relationship, was created by Michael Colton and John Aboud. They exec produce alongside Topher Grace and Eric and Kim Tannenbaum of The Tannenbaum Company. 

Season one concludes May 19.  

ABC comedies The Goldbergs, The Conners and black-ish start new seasons Oct. 21. American Housewife joins the Wednesday comedy block Oct. 28.

The pandemic has caused all sorts of delays in terms of network production. 

“We couldn’t be more excited to spread some much-needed joy with our Wednesday night comedy lineup,” said Karey Burke, president, ABC Entertainment. “While we had to be incredibly flexible this year, we are so lucky that we’re able to continue our long tradition of making Wednesday night comedy a strong staple of our fall broadcast schedule.”

Related: ABC Lines Up Two 'Holey Moley' Specials

It will be season eight of The Goldbergs, with two episodes starting the season. Wendi McLendon-Covey, Sean Giambrone, Troy Gentile, Hayley Orrantia and Jeff Garlin are in the cast. 

It will be season three for The Conners, spun off of Roseanne. John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert and Lecy Goranson star. 

Black-ish, with Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross in the cast, is set to start season seven. American Housewife will premiere season five. Katy Mixon and Diedrich Bader star. 

Dates for ABC’s scripted dramas will be announced soon, the network said. Dates for unscripted series were previously announced.

Roseanne, depicting a working-class family and its President Donald Trump-supporting matriarch, was television’s big story last season, averaging nearly 19 million viewers on a live-plus-seven-day basis.

Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet led to its cancellation, but the network wasn’t done with the idea: The Conners premieres Oct. 16, and ABC hopes the gang can do some semblance of the robust ratings Roseanne garnered last year.

Ignoring the fiasco of the tweet, other networks are chasing The Conners into Middle America, hoping to win viewers with heartland themes built around the everyman as hero: Last Man Standing on Fox; NBC’s stacked Chicago shows on Wednesdays; FBI and God Friended Me on CBS; and a handful of series on the streaming networks.

“When something like Roseanne happens, the industry as a whole looks to replicate that in some way, shape or form,” media consultant Bill Carroll said.

Very few network executives will ever concede to targeting one section of the country or the other, and anyone on the broadcast side of the business is thinking broad appeal for anything on air. But these days, the aim seems to be at the very “flyover” states once ignored by tastemakers. And while series on the streaming networks have for years focused not so much on vast appeal, but on select viewers interested in gripping stories, some on the streaming side say their shows, too, shoot for viewers in the heartland.

Before Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan premiered on Prime Video Aug. 31, placing Clancy’s ace analyst in the heat of the Middle East, showrunner Carlton Cuse said he saw Ryan as a “classic American hero” when TV’s defense-minded antiheroes, on the likes of Homeland and 24, bend the rules to complete their missions. “He’s a guy with morals, and a sense of altruism and patriotism,” Cuse said.

Jack Ryan aims to depict the federal defense agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, in a noble light when many are quick to criticize them, Cuse added. Patriotic civil servants play well in Middle America.

“It’s the type of show that’s not made for TV critics, it’s made for viewers,” he said. “We think it has broad appeal — and appeals to a whole section of the country.”

Same goes for drama One Dollar, which premiered Aug. 30 on CBS All Access. The show, which tells the story of multiple murders through a dollar bill that changes hands among connected characters, is set in Pittsburgh, where showrunner Craig Zobel said it can depict the city’s current class clash between the big brains of Carnegie Mellon and Uber and Pittsburgh’s steel-production past.

“The idea was to set something that wasn’t New York or Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s indicative of another part of America we don’t see all the time on TV.”

A year ago, Amazon chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos said he wanted a global hit or two out of Amazon Studios, something akin to Game of Thrones. “We’re a mass-market brand,” then-studio head Roy Price told Variety. Yet Amazon’s big fall release, Matthew Weiner anthology series The Romanoffs, which premiered on Prime Video Oct. 12, is hardly mass-market. Its pilot, set in Paris (with subtitles), feels like an independent film, running nearly 90 minutes and featuring a main character with racist tendencies.

Networks Soldier On

President Trump’s surprise win for the White House gave voice to overlooked voters in the heartland, and it appears to have prompted networks to make sure they don’t overlook them. The 2017-18 broadcast season featured a glut of military themed programming, including SEAL Team on CBS, Valor on The CW and The Brave on NBC. At the time, The CW president Mark Pedowitz downplayed any notion of programming to red or blue states.

“It doesn’t matter what the attitude of the country is,” Pedowitz said. “If it’s right, people will watch it.”

People, for the most part, did not watch. SEAL Team returned this season, while the other shows did not. (History also cancelled military drama Six, about Navy SEALS, after two seasons this past summer.)

Do red states and blue states actually like different programs? A study from E-Poll showed that Democrats’ favorite show for the 2017-2018 season was Game of Thrones, followed by How to Get Away With Murder, This Is Us, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Broad City. Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med also made the top 10, as did Stranger Things.

Republicans favored Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away With Murder, Supernatural, This Is Us and Criminal Minds. The Walking Dead, at No. 6, was the lone non-broadcast show on the GOP list. Roseanne came in at No. 71 among Democrats and No. 31 among Republicans.

Another E-Poll study showed viewers who are Democrats prefer shows that are “sexy, edgy, emotionally involving, ethnically diverse or have strong characters.” Republican viewers, for their part, like programs that are “family-friendly, funny, plot-driven or have storylines that involve ‘good vs. evil.’ ”

Everyone’s Invited

Similar to network executives, few showrunners will say they are targeting a certain section of the country. New ABC comedy The Kids Are Alright, which leads out of The Conners, shows a family of eight boys growing up with ultra-conservative parents in the early ’70s, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and other social strife. “I haven’t thought, this is a red-state show, this is a blue-state show,” creator/showrunner Tim Doyle said. “I haven’t approached it as, I’m reaching out to this audience or that audience.”

Neal Baer, showrunner on drama Designated Survivor — which will premiere on Netflix after two seasons on ABC — said people are too complex to program to individually. “You have to be really careful about saying you’re going to pitch to this group or that group and how that affects your storytelling,” he said.

Network executives don’t love talking about red states and blue states watching their shows, either. After all, it’s entertainment, not cable news. Andy Kubitz, executive VP, programming strategy, ABC Entertainment, said Roseanne wasn’t so much about politics as it was about social issues, seen through the eyes of working-class folks.

“I don’t believe the Roseanne conversation has much to do with red state and blue state,” he said. “The first episode touched on politics, but the rest was about real issues in America that no one else is talking about on television.”

Among the broadcast rookies, FBI, which premiered Sept. 25, shows the inner workings of the bureau’s New York office. Last Man Standing started Sept. 28. Airing for six seasons on ABC before it moved to Fox, it’s about a politically conservative guy, played by Tim Allen, who works for a sporting goods chain. God Friended Me, which debuted Sept. 30, is about an atheist podcaster who is friended on social media by God.

If The Conners looks crafted for the heartland, NBC’s comedies, which include Will & Grace, whose reboot was birthed by a video the four cast members did about Trump weeks before the presidential election, are designed more for urban viewers. Pedowitz said CW hit Supernatural connects with a broad swath of the country, while Crazy Ex-Girlfriend appeals to niche viewers.

“We’re broadcasters — we’re designed to hit the whole country,” he said. “But within the whole country you’re going to hit pockets.”

The Murphy Brown reboot on CBS reaches out to both ends of the political spectrum. The premiere saw Brown, who comes out of retirement to host a cable news show, spar with President Trump on Twitter. It also featured a cameo from Hillary Clinton, who interviews to be Brown’s secretary. (“For four years I was the secretary of a very large organization,” said Clinton.)

Murphy Brown also features Brown’s son, Avery — recall that Dan Quayle derided Murphy Brown for “mocking the importance of fathers” for depicting a single mother back in 1992 — hosting his show on a rival conservative network, the Wolf Network, that features chats with regular Americans in coffee shops and bowling alleys.

Executive producer Steve Peterman, who also worked on the original show, told The New York Times the series came back because Trump is in the White House. “If Hillary Clinton was elected there’d be no artistic reason for this show to be on the air,” he said. “But because of the election, and because the position the press is now finding itself in, there were so many reasons for this show to come back.”

Yet the idea of creating a show based on what the country appears to be feeling and thinking doesn’t quite line up with the labor-intensive, time-consuming nature of producing television. Preston Beckman, former senior strategist at Fox and chairman of media consulting outfit The Beckman Group, mentions Fox brass meeting after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to focus on how best to program to the wounded nation, before deciding they’d never be able to react in time.

“You make decisions today and implement them one or two years down the road,” Beckman said. “Who knows where the country’s head could be then?”

The 2018-19 broadcast TV season officially launches next week as ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and the CW begin rolling out shiny, new scripted shows as well as new episodes of returning hit series.

In years past, cable networks looking to launch new original programming avoided the months of September and October like the plague for fear that their shows would drown amid the high level of marketing and promotional noise generated by the broadcast networks.

This year however, shows like FX’s Mayans M.C., a sequel to the network's popular Sons Of Anarchy series; USA Network’s The Purge, a takeoff on the popular movie franchise of the same name; and Lifetime’s social media/romance thriller You have all debuted after Labor Day, weeks before the broadcasters could get high-profile new shows like The Conners, The Cool Kids, F. B. I., Magnum P.I., Manifest, A Million Little Things and Murphy Brown in front of viewers.

“Back in the day cable used to make a name for itself in the summer when the broadcast networks weren’t doing much (original programming), and they gained alot of traction,” said Marc Berman, editor of TV industry website Programming Insider. “The way the industry works now its a 12-month business … you can no longer sit and hold [new content] back because the broadcast networks traditionally put most of their new shows out in September.”

So far, viewers haven’t waited for the new broadcast shows to get a taste of new fall programming:

--Mayans M.C. drew 4.6 million viewers on a Nielsen live +3 basis for its Sept. 4 premiere, a 64% increase over the 2008 premiere of its predecessor Sons Of Anarchy. The series also drew the most viewers in key Adult 25-54, Adult 18-49 and adult 18-34 demos than any other new cable series premiere this year, according to FX.

--BET’s The Bobby Brown Story miniseries drew a combined 4.6 million viewers across its Sept. 4-5 premiere telecasts, the most viewers the network has drawn for a scripted program since the January 2017 The New Edition Story mini-series.

--The Purge scared up more than 1.3 million viewers for its Sept. 4 premiere, making it one of the network’s highest show premieres of the year.

Lifetime executive vice president of movies, limited series and acquisitions Tanya Lopez says the September launch of You offered an opportunity to grab and hopefully lock in viewers before the new broadcast series shows premiered. 

You's’ Sept. 9 premiere drew 4.4 million viewers on a Nielsen Live +3 ratings basis, and has reached more than 9.2 million total viewers across all telecasts, according to the network.

“This gives Lifetime several weeks to establish a loyal audience for You as the series only continues to get better and more addictive as the season progresses,” Lopez said. “We’re in a sweet spot of catching audiences who are returning from their summer vacations, settling back into their lives and watching TV. It’s a fantastic opportunity to catch these viewers before the fall promotion hits full steam.”

With several cable and streaming services set to launch high-profile scripted series over the next few weeks -- including FX's Mr. Inbetween, Crackle's Us & Them, Hulu's Into The Dark, and Amazon's The Romanoffs, its abundantly clear that the fall months are no longer the exclusive purview of the broadcast networks to launch new scripted content.